In Silence
by Lethally Alive
Summary: AU where Emma and Killian are Hogwarts students. This story is complete for now, but I may write the next chapters later.
1. Chapter 1

Emma Swan, a 6th year Griffindor student was working on her Enchantment homework, trying to write the 10 inches of scroll for the next day in the Common Room. As was her habit, she was working alone, on a table by the window where she had a magnificent view on the forest and the Quidditch Pitch.

She was ardently trying to figure out how to describe the link between the wand movement and the wording of the reparo spell in more than three lines. Being the teacher's child provided no advantages when your parents actually expected more of you than of other students.

_Tap, tap_, a black eagle was at her window and she could see a black envelope tied at its leg. She closed her ink bottle and packed her stuff in her bag hurriedly before letting the eagle in. The bird as usual perched itself atop her right shoulder and waited until it got its usual pat and one of the treats she had in her pockets for such occasion before holding its leg out for her to untie the letter. The eagle flow out the window and she closed it before other students complained about the cold. They were going through a winter storm that had lasted for a week and magic had predicted that the end was not near yet.

Using the pocket knife she always carried with her, orders of her father, she cut the envelope on the top, without breaking the seal. The students in the Common Room who had been at Hogwarts for more than a year knew exactly who had sent the letter, from the color of the envelope and the unbroken seal.

She closed the pocket knife and put it in her bag with the envelope and read the letter, which was nothing more than a piece of paper folded in two. On it where written four words.

_Our Usual Place Now_

Emma grabbed her bag and went to the Girl's Tower where she left her bag and grabbed her heavy fur lined cloak and the scarf she had been offered for her last birthday. She then left the Griffindor Tower and ran down the three stairways that lead her to the bottom floor. She left through the castle's gate, pushing against the students who were hurrying inside the castle's walls because the snow had started falling again. She then turned towards the greenhouses. She watched over her back to see if anyone was following her and then promptly disappeared between the greenhouse two and three.

She arrived at the entry of a path to the woods where the trees protected her from the falling snow and crossed through them until she arrived at a clearing. The air had gotten warmer as she got close to the clearing and when she step inside, there was no snow on the ground or in the trees around the clearing, the air was no longer cutting at her face but warming her slowly. She headed towards to the black haired man sitting on his Slytherin green cloak spread on the ground against the giant oak tree in the middle of the clearing.

The young man had a book open on his crossed legs, his back resting over the trunk of the tree. His white shirt was opened at the top and his tie had been loosened up, resting lower on his chest than it should. As she got closer he finally raised his head from the book and looked at her with his blue eyes. Emma could see that he had again applied some eyeliner to his eyes, or "guyliner" as he liked to call it.

Emma stopped in front of him and started taking off her scarf and cloak. "You sent an owl saying you wanted to meet me and that it was urgent. What is it about, Killian?"

He closed his book, put it in the bag that was next to him and draw his knees up, putting his chin on them. He looked at her sadly and started. "It's about Milah, she–"

Emma stopped moving as soon as she heard _that _name.

"That's your emergency?! No, no, no! I am TIRED of listening to you babbling about her and how perfect she is, you are obsessed and I am not helping you getting deeper into that abyss! Find someone else to confide in because I am done listening to how awesome she is and how perfect she is for you, it's over!"

She yelled at him and turned around, her clothes over her arm, walking towards the path she had come from to go back to her Tower. Her head was down to hide the tears in her eyes.

Milah Milah Milah, it was the only thing he talked about this year, the boy was completely in love with the married woman but he couldn't even see how hurtful it was for Emma to listen to him talking about her all the time. Emma had been in love with him for two years and Killian still had not figured it out, he just thought of her as his best friend. Almost everyone in her house knew about her feelings for him and pitied her for it. They tried to tell her that he would never stop considering her as a friend and that he was sleeping around with elder girls. And yet since a few months, he had stopped flirting with everyone, no, now he only cared about Milah, the 40 year old, married bartender of The Three Broomsticks.

Killian stood up and ran towards her, grabbing her by the waist before she left the clearing. He buried his face in her hair and begged her.

"No Emma, please this is important, she is missing!"

"What now, you haven't seen her yesterday so she is obviously missing?!"

The pleading notes in his voice stopped her from leaving, she knew him and he would not make such a fuss unless he was certain something bad had happened. She looked at him and waited. He let go of her waist and sat right in front of her. Emma was doing everything that she could to avoid looking at his face, searching for something to look at in the clearing. He grabbed her sleeves to draw her attention to him and Emma had no choice but to yield and lost herself in his breath-taking and desperate eyes.

"Emma! You need to listen to me, I'm telling you, Milah is really missing! I have asked around Hogsmeade and no one has seen her in a week, since the last time she has worked at the inn! They say she got home to Rumplestiltskin and then she never came back to work or was seen out of the house. And now he is saying to the Aurors that she took her stuff, apparated somewhere and left him and Baelfire! He did something to her, he has to. She didn't just vanish: she would never do that to Bae!"

He stopped to catch his breath, his hands fidgeting with the lion patch on the sleeves of her robes.

"Look, lately she had been telling me things about Rumplestiltskin, how he was darker when he was at home and… And she said that he might be the Dark One! She overheard something and he has killed her for that. He must have used an Unforgivable spell, I know it. We need to tell your mother and your father, the Headmaster, they will be able to do something!"

He stood up, uncaring of the stain from the dirt of the ground, and Emma knew that this was more serious than she could imagine, and went to pick his stuff up from where it had been left next to the tree. He was muttering something about Aurors and Dark magic.

"Jones, stay here!" She grabbed his arms and pushed him until he sat on his cloak as he had been when she had arrived.

Emma kneeled in front of him and hugged him. "Listen, even if what you say is true we need proofs! We can't go to my mother with your accusations and no evidences: with your reputation no one will believe you otherwise! And if Rumple is the Dark One then he will do the same thing with you that he did with Milah, and no one will be the wiser. I'll help you, okay? I believe you but _they_ don't trust you because of your family. We need to make sure that they have no choice but to believe us."

She let go of him and sat in front of him, her crossed legs touching his legs spread on each side of her.

"Now tell me what did she hear to make her believe he is the Dark One?"

He let his head fall against the trunk of the oak, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"First, you need to know that Milah has… _Had_ some prophetic powers. Sometimes in her dreams she could see different possible futures and… She saw something about you before we had even met. It wasn't clear but basically it told her that you would either be the key to destroying the Dark One or helping him become stronger. So the first day we went to Hogsmeade after the school had started, when she saw us at the Three Broomstick she recognized you. And after you left to do your shopping, she came to talk to me, just chatting up.

She was nice to me, she didn't know who I was related to so we talked two other times. And she'd sometimes ask me questions about you because she saw us talking together in Hogsmeade. Anyway, during the last weekend of October she told me about her powers and what she had seen, she wasn't sure at first that it was really about you but then she had more dreams of you and the Dark One. So she confessed in me about how she was worried about you so we kept meeting. And lately she told me that she suspected her husband to be the Dark One and she thought he might have heard her speak during one of those dreams."

Emma could not believe what she was hearing, he had conspired with Milah about her life without telling her about it! And all those times he was talking to her about how Milah was amazing and smart instead of telling her the important stuff. Her body automatically recoiled away from Killian and his touch.

"Wait, wait, What?! I would be the subject of a prophecy? Shouldn't I have, maybe, been told about it? You know, since it's kind of _my life_?! What the hell Killian, I fucking trusted you!"

He moved to his knees and grabbed her shoulders.

"Emma please, believe me, I would have told you about it but Milah said that you knowing before the right time would put you in more danger than you could handle. You have to trust me, I never stopped asking her about when I would be able to tell you, so we could research it with your parents. And four days ago she sent me a letter, saying to meet her Saturday at the Shrieking Shack so we could start planning for a meeting with you and your parents to tell you the whole truth. But when I went to met her she was not there and that's when I got worried and started asking around for her. Emma, please, trust me on this, I would not lie to you if I had a choice, _please._"

The words were rushing out of his mouth, as was his habit of talking fast but his voice breaking on the last word made Emma understand that this man in front of her was still the same person she had been friend with for so long, the boy she had fallen for, he had just been watching out for her in the only way he could, in silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I just noticed that I had posted this second part on Tumblr a ~(very) long time ago, but never here. For now this fic is on hiatus but I do plan to get back to it, probably somewhen in July!**

Emma wanted to keep being angry at him and ignore him to make him understand how hurt she was, but she was not a child anymore and she knew that she could not afford to do such thing, she had to help put a stop to the Dark One's plans, especially if she was linked to those plans.

She looked him straight in the eyes. "I am really really fucking angry at you Killian, like you can't even imagine" He had let go of her shoulders but her words made him raise his hand and he frowned at her, a look Emma knew very well, it meant he was going to say something, because he could not keep quiet when it was needed. Emma grabbed his hand and held it with both of her hands. "but I _do know_ you meant no harm and we don't have the time to fight about this."

"So tell me, Milah was married with Rumple for what fifteen years, how could she only find out he is the Dark One?"

"She says that until last year he was totally normal, she thinks the change happened during the summer, he left for a week to look for special potion ingredients in Albania and she said that when he came back he was different, prompt to anger. He blamed it on the fact that he had been affected by undiluted fire rats' poison: he even showed her the bite mark. After a week the mark disappeared and little by little his anger outburst stopped and he was back to normal."

"So that's when she thinks it happened? Did she tell you if she saw anything in her dreams about the transitioning or where the dagger was?"

He looked at her from below his dark hair confusedly, he looked like a young naïve child for a moment, a child needing her guidance and protection. But just as soon as the comparison appeared in her mind, his look changed and he looked pensive.

"Milah definitely thought that it was when it happened, because later he never left the school long enough to go on a trip, not even during at Halloween when he had a week off, he stayed with her and Bae in Hogsmeade. She said he had been secretive and kind of shifty that week, but no sudden changes like the one in the summer. What's this dagger you are talking about?"

"Well, I am talking about _the_ dagger, haven't you heard or read about it? It's in Hogwarts: A History for Merlin's sake, isn't that your favorite book? Here, let me show you."

One of the things to know about Killian Jones was that he was a book worm and quite the nerd. He hid it from his fellow students because he said it would "ruin his reputation" especially in Slytherin where most students thought of him only as the "sexy and talented Quidditch player who was related the infamous Mills family", Killian's own words. If you heard him say it then you could hear him drawl out the word "talented" in his Irish brogue.

He could be found reading any kind of book, from a Muggle thriller novel to a book about magical theories. Killian's favorite book genre however, was history books, the kind that accounted battles and historical figures lives as well as disappeared places and cultures. And the book he never left the castle without, for a reason that Emma could not figure out, was Hogwarts: A History.

The black leather shoulder bag that Killian used was laying next to the tree, the part that she could see had a pirate flag's patch. Emma crawled until it was at arm's length and then dragged it towards her, earning herself an "Oye!" from Killian. She then pulled a book out of it and let go of the bag before noticing the title of the book.

PETER PAN

Emma felt her eyebrow rise out of its own will and a smirk play on her lips while her head tilted towards the book, their way of saying "seriously?".

She remembered when they had first met during their first year in this clearing she had had that book with her and Killian had asked her about it. At first they hadn't talked to each other much, they had both found the clearing during their second week end at Hogwarts and after having determined that they were the only one who knew about it, they had set up a truth where they were no longer Emma Swan, Griffindor and daughter of Snow White and Headmaster Charming, and Killian Jones, Slytherin and cousin of the Dark Witches Cora and Regina Mills. They just kept themselves to a side of the clearing and ignored the other, just basking in the calm and the magic of the clearing. Then they started to strike a friendship, thanks to the books they would carry with them and read in the clearing. They started by asking each other about the books and by the end of the year they were best friends, but only inside the clearing. Inside the school they were two students belonging to opposite houses and having no friends in common.

Emma shook herself out of her reverie, it had taken her only a few seconds to remember that time six years ago. She searched inside the bag for the book she wanted and then put the Peter Pan book back inside.

She opened Hogwarts: A History while pulling herself up and searched through the index for the part she wanted, opened the book at the right page, and then sat next to Killian to show him.

"See this part, it's about the Founders' biography, I am surprised you haven't read it, since you used to be so keen on finding secret passages thanks to this book. Anyway here it says that the Dark One has only one weakness, there is a dagger with his name on it, and if someone possesses the dagger then they can control the Dark One." She pointed at an illustration of a wizard holding a dagger in the air and a man in a dark cloak on his knees in front of him. "It also says that the Dark One is immortal and can only be killed by the same dagger. But-"

"Oh Emma this is perfect!" Killian got up, looking frantic. He started pacing around the tree, a dark smile on his face.

"All we need is to find this dagger and then we'll be able to destroy him, we'll avenge Milah and we'll make sure that he can never hurt you!" He was almost jumping around in his joy at having found a solution and Emma could not help but feel regret at the idea to have to crush his hopes.

"Killian! Killian, look at me!" He stopped jumping around and turned towards her, his smile thinning as he took in her sad face.

"If someone kills the Dark One with his dagger, he BECOMES the Dark One. That's how Rumplestiltskin became the Dark One, he must have found the former Dark One's dagger and killed him. But I thought about it and let's be realistic, Rumple is a smart Slytherin, if he actually turned into the Dark One in Albania there is a good chance that he hide his dagger there, or somewhere that is very well protected and where no one will find it. He could even have transfigured it into something else! If Milah did not tell you about the dagger it means she did not see it, so we can forget about that idea, but…"

"But what?"

"Well, if I remember correctly, it should be… "

Emma rifled through some pages until she found the biography of Salazar Slytherin.

"Here! It says that in 1228 when the Dark One was ravaging the country, after the Founders had tried everything that they could to find the dagger, they built under the guidance of Salazar Slytherin a cell capable of holding anyone and of preventing them from using their magic, no matter how powerful they were. From the moment the door was locked and the wizard inside the cell, he or she could no longer use their magic, and they used that cell to trap the Dark One for over fifty years, until someone who had found the dagger, killed the former Dark One and that's when the cycle started again."

"Well if we can't kill him then we will at least make sure to stop him, until we can find a permanent way to destroy that murderer."


End file.
